Paco’s POV:
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Week 5)
Francisco José “Paco” Cosió Marron
YAA is excited to have the return of a beloved blog column called Paco’s POV. Our wonderful Orchestra Manager, Francisco José “Paco” Cosió-Marron, will be writing these regularly to give you a bit more background on the production we are currently working on, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Check back often to get your fill of Paco’s POV!
Good morning all!
Here is an interesting tidbit of history evoked by one of MCYO's pieces in the repertoire of this fall's concert that I thought you might find interesting and enjoy. We are doing the overture to Adolphe Adam's opera: Si j'étais roi (if I were a king.)
If you have had the opportunity to follow the music scene at the Strathmore the past few years, you may remember that the Young Artists of America did a musical, Les Misérables, based on a Victor Hugo novel of the same name that told the story of life in Paris between 1815 and the early 1830s. In many ways, it details the youth of Adolphe Adam and the miseries that he survived to become a prolific composer of operas and ballets. As the saying goes: “that which does not kill us makes us stronger” may well have applied to our composer.
He was a mere 12 year old when Wellington beat Napoleon at Waterloo and brought down the French Empire which caused Paris several years of incredibly difficult economic times and started a series of “revolutions” which culminated in Adam’s life with the 1848 revolt that shut down the theaters and cultural scene in Paris and across France leaving our composer destitute with massive debts that he attempted to pay off in the last eight years of his life. In between these cataclysmic events he wrote many popular numbers for vaudevilles in his early years, a large number of piano arrangements, transcriptions and potpourris of favorite operatic arias, and numerous light songs and ballads as well as several grand operas and ballets.
In France, during Adam's lifetime, Le chalet was his most popular opera. Other operas he wrote included Le postillon de Lonjumeau, Le toréador and Si j'étais roi. The last being a tongue-in-cheek commentary on how life might have otherwise been, if only.....
Although he was a prolific composer of opera, Adam wrote ballet music even more fluently. He commented that it was fun, rather than work. Giselle is the best known though he wrote four others that have survived till today and are performed by ballet companies around the world including La jolie fille de Gand, La filleule des fées and Le corsaire. Little of Adam's religious music has entered the regular repertory, with the exception of his Cantique de Noël, "Minuit, chrétiens", known in English as "O Holy Night".
His greatest operatic success, Le Chalet, actually opened just a year and a half after the barricades of the June rebellion of 1832 that Hugo highlights and uses as the denouement in his novel occurred. That he continued to compose through all that befell him and Paris speaks volumes to his strength of character and his deep creative desire.
The prospects of cross pollination between YAA and MCYO grow as both of these organizations continue to flower and develop.
Enjoy!
P